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Sandra Bamford

Biography:

Sandra Bamford received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Virginia. Her main area of research expertise focuses on the analysis of kinship and family ties. She has completed research in the highlands of Papua New Guinea with a group of people known as the Kamea. She has also examined the impact of New Reproductive Technologies in precipitating new forms of kin arrangements. Her most recent work focuses on child welfare and foster care in North America with an emphasis on how foster care is understood and practiced in Canada.

Affiliations:

Professional Service:

Reviewer of journal manuscripts for Body and Society, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, The Australian Journal of Anthropology, Ethnos, Anthropologica, Comparative Studies in Society and History, American Ethnology, Social Analysis, JRAI.

Reviewer of book manuscripts for Berghahn Books, University of Hawaii Press, School of American Research Press.

Reviewer of grant applications for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

1998 - Identity, Nature and Culture: Sociality and the Environment in Melanesia. Special Issue, SOCIAL ANALYSIS 42 (3). (Edited collection by Sandra Bamford).

1997 - Fieldwork Revisited: The Changing Context of Ethnographic Practice in the Era of Globalization. Special Issue, ANTHROPOLOGY AND HUMANISM. (Co-edited with Joel Robbins).

Refereed Journal Articles and Book Chapters:

In preparation - “Miraculous Conceptions: Religion and the New Reproductive Technologies.” Review Essay for Focal.

In preparation - "Spectral Connections: Anthropological Engagements with Posthumous Kinship." To be submitted to CulturalAnthropology.

In preparation - “Unitary Subjects, Discrepant Bodies: Domestic Violence, Resistance, and the Law in Papua New Guinea.” To be submitted to Signs.

In preparation - “The Road to Development: Culture, Identity Formation and Millennial Fantasies in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea.” To appear in Roy Wagner: Symbolic Anthropology and the Fate of the New Melanesian Anthropology. (Co-edited by S. Bamford, J. Robbins, J. Shaffner & J. Weiner).

1998 - “Introduction: The Grounds of Melanesian Sociality.” In S. Bamford (ed.) Identity, Nature and Culture: Sociality and the Environment in Melanesia. Special Issue, SOCIAL ANALYSIS 42 (3) p. 4-8.

1998 - “Humanised Landscapes, Embodied Worlds: Land Use and the Construction of Intergenerational Sociality among the Kamea.” In S. Bamford (ed.) Identity, Nature and Culture: Sociality and the Environment in Melanesia. Special Issue, SOCIAL ANALYSIS 42 (3), p. 28-54.

1998 - “To Eat for Another: Taboo and the Elicitation of Bodily Form among the Kamea.” In M. Lambek & A. Strathern (eds) Bodies and Persons: Comparative Perspectives from Africa and Melanesia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 158-171.

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